When air is not a fluid, but a barrier,
we enter the zone of supersonic flight.
When civilization is stopped by a wall,
we enter the Dark Age zone of death.
Can we break out?

The story, The Shockwave Effect, comprises a chapter of the novel, Winning without Victory, by Rolf A. F. Witzsche. The novel is Episode 3 of the series of novels, The Lodging for the Rose. The series is designed to explore the great renaissance principle, the Principle of Universal Love, the foundation for civilization. The fictional story, The Shockwave Effect, plays in the mid-1980s at a hotel in Berlin exploring the principles for averting a world crisis. The exploration is focused onto the boundary zone, the zone that the world is presently in with potentially enormous changes on the horizon. Supersonic shockwaves already begin in boundary zone and have been observed and photographed at Mach 0.95. Likewise have some early economic and political shockwaves been observed.

The cover photo is that of a T-38 aircraft flying at Mach 1.1 producing shockwaves that were photographed with a Schlieren camera on December 13, 1993 by Dr. Leonard Weinstein. The NASA photo EC-94-42528-1 is a part of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Photo Collection. See: www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/index.html